


Too High a Price

by Rainingday



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28997046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainingday/pseuds/Rainingday
Kudos: 1





	Too High a Price

His father was dead.

Erik wanted to run to him, wanted to scream and push away the man who stood over N’Jobu’s lifeless body, who had his head down like he was praying. But the iron grip that twisted his arm far up his spine only turned into an even crueler line of pain as he wrestled against violently.

A deep, sudden grief that overtook him was so black, so black and engulfed him in the terrible hopelessness.

He felt cold and fainted.

“Stay. Still.” The owner of the brutal hands hissed, pinned him down with effortless ease. There was a wrongness in those gleaming eyes, rings of flaring ignis fatuus shone a fluorescent yellow-green in the irises that divulged her preternatural nature. 

Hellhounds.

He reacted on instinct. Except she was still faster.

Like a brilliant light the agony burst upon his brain, every fiber of muscle straining, electrified with magic but nothing, the flow of seething energy was chained by a sickening crush and then fully immobilized by the physical restraint on his wrist. Erik bit back the impulse to beg for help that would not come, forced himself to slow his breathing, to stop struggling even as he sensed the bind of the spell slithered even tighter. He could almost hear his bone breaking, as if he was deep under water and was shattered by tremendous pressure beyond this world.

There would be no mercy. The hellhounds were loyal only to one, and one master only. They were rare, ancient species, brethren of dragons, faeries, phoenixes and other old bloods. Lithe, quick body containing a patient, retentive mind; immensely strong, incredibly fast, seemingly without ambition for themselves but remorseless in the destruction of others in one simple order of their holder. Being feared, disliked and mistrusted.

Drawn to formidable power as moths was drawn to fire.

Erik finally recognized the tall man who now walking toward him, a trim and confident man moved with consummate grace, wearing command like a birthmark.

He met his golden cat eyes, as solemn, immemorial, and pitiless as the sun.

The man raised a hand, cool, leather-clad fingers curled gently and with the second knuckle of his forefinger, he hooked the point of Erik’s chin and tipped his face up. There’s something predatory and injurious in the glow of his dark, handsome features, something that sized you up, found your weaknesses, and debated whether to dine on them.

“You’ve grown.”

Erik gritted the title through his teeth, barely audible. “King T’Chaka.”

T’Chaka, his uncle, nodded.

N’Jobu didn’t talk much about his family, he preferred to hide their shadows behind the bedtime stories. About the glory of wars and feuds and justice; extravagant wealth and crystal chandeliers with ruby and diamond pendants so unblemished that the light bouncing off them turned the dust motes in the air gold; the imperial burial vault that was decorated with scattered torches that bore magical flames of amethyst color, charmed to last forever.

Travelers entered the between-forest, and instead of finding the golden city, they walked straight into an invented distance that perpetually receded before. Lights peeked through dense trees in a strangely regular way, making no distinction between what was distant and what was close, like a system of Russian dolls opening one into another; the intimate perspectives of the dark woods changed endlessly around the interloper. As though it had another timescale.

Where the eyes that watched you took no account of your existence.

Those were the rare times when his father seemed closer to the world, to him, temporarily loosened and freed of the cellar and the dark walls and padlocked door. Erik hated how on occasion N’Jobu would retreated himself into his fortress and locked other people (him) out, rejected any kind of help. Drowned in his own misery and secrets and then stopped existing, for a while. 

Leaving Erik scared, cold, and alone.

_Few months earlier._

_N’Jobu wasn’t looking at him but out over the park; some way down the road — considerably far, a hundred feet, maybe — stood the figure of a man in a raincoat, stout and foggy. He was leaning against the railings, silhouetted in the shifting mist. For some unnamable reason the sight made the hair on the back of Erik’s neck stood up, he permitted himself to seek for his father’s hand, not normally something he would have done._

_(He had remembered then, at that fatal night, thinking about the chill; had felt the stab of hurt, the burst of anger and wretchedness, to think of the clammy palm, as he remembered the chill.)_

_“Dad, do you know the man?”_

_“What—?” He looked startled, as if he’d forgotten he was there. A tensed squeezed. “Um no. No, he just look familiar.”_

_“Ok.” Erik said doubtfully. Later for hours that night, he’d lain awake tortured, flopping back and forth and watching the rain clacked in ragged gusts against the windowpane and wondering where his father would have been._

_N’Jobu wasn’t back until the next morning._

They never stayed in a same place for long. Whether to chase or to run from something, which Erik wouldn’t know. Perhaps a bit of both. He thought of asking his father, someday, sometime, after the rain had passed, and the ground was moist, the whole landscape so sharply defined against pale blue sky that one could distinguish even single trees on the farthest hills.

But he was gone.

Shadows began to twirl at his feet. The weight of restriction was no longer choking his neck, though the invisible strings tied on his limbs was not yet removed, and Erik could only act as pliant as a puppet.

The room had faded into darkness behind him, like a cloud passed before the moon and darkened out all light above. No one but the king and he.

“Why?” Erik couldn’t help but ask, shook his head, scarcely, trembling.

“A lot of people dear to me had died, because of your father.” T’Chaka countered after a significant pause, mouth set into a grim, straight line. “He gave me no choice.”

An edge of torment and bitterness bled through his words, for a blinking second he sounded more like a man who had just lost his brother, rather than a cold blooded murderer.

T’Chaka mourned for N’Jobu’s death, they both did, and that was like nothing else, almost an intimacy: they were probably the only two people right now who shared the same unspeakable sorrow. Ultimately, only a few people would ever know about it, but just now, for these few moments, it was theirs alone.

The lost prince, Erik suddenly remembered. The tale of a young boy, the boy grew, as boys did. So eager to explore the great wide world that was hidden from him all his life, running away from home once he grabbed the chance to leave. He believed he was special, destined to break the shackles and rewrite the rules, arrayed in his vestments of power. A soaring eagle that could fly through no man’s land unharmed. However the land was too vast, too board, and even with its extensive stretching wings it couldn’t escape the imperative of gravity.

And so he fell to the ground exhausted, he got to his feet, he staggered, marched on amongst shards of abandoned promises and crumbled words. 

Keeping distance was not an option. The prince had lost something big and true, and could not get it back.

“I know you’ve always wanted to see the sunset in Wakanda. You can see it.”

Erik looked away. He was still alive, that was what T’Chaka was reminding him. A numb dread closed around his lungs.

Wakanda. Home, or it was supposed to be something like that, though Allison Stevens didn’t agree to that aspect. She was the first who taught Erik that despair was the emotion which followed a sense of betrayal. Oh, how he had futilely hoped to be pulled into a full body embrace and his chin on her breast and his cheek on her collarbone, a kiss against his forehead. He clenched his eyes shut so as not to watch her go.

It brought a stinging resentment to his throat. When he looked back his face was dry. “My father…”

T’Chaka regarded him somberly.

“He will be buried along your grandfather’s side, he’s our blood, and nothing would ever change that.” 

Erik believed him, albeit knowing what was held to him was not kindness, but simply a trade-off. Still what choice did he have?

“Alright.”

***

People didn’t just lose their lives when they did something wrong.

Far away, something crashed, and a flock of birds shoot from the trees, a flurry of black against the heavy grey sky.


End file.
